Tema: A language Myth: The Arabic impact on Spanish

A LANGUAGE MYTH: THE ARABIC IMPACT ON SPANISH

by Tony Donovan

[Published July, 2003 in "Language Magazine" (www.languagemagazine.com)]

When the Berber general Tariq Ibn Ziyad launched his invasion of Spain in 711 A.D. by crossing over from Africa with several thousand infantrymen, he brought with him a vigorous civilization that would quickly alter the linguistic topography of the newly conquered territory. Within a few short decades, Arabic was established as the language of culture and government throughout most of the Iberian peninsula. Although the vulgate Latin then spoken continued as a living vernacular, Arabic became the preeminent language in Spain for 700 years following Ibn Zayid’s historic expedition.

Yet curiously, the influence that Arabic had on the developing Spanish language during those 700 years was unremarkable. Despite the popular belief that Spanish was highly impacted by its Semitic neighbor and that the modern language is replete with Arabic terms, a close study reveals just the opposite: The Spanish lexicon was barely penetrated by the conqueror’s language in any fundamental or enduring way.

According to one source, more than 4000 Arabic lexical items found their way into Spanish. A 1250 word list of these items can be found on-line, and I’ve used this word list as my main resource for this study.

Etymology is a notoriously deceptive field. Such seemingly useful tools as word lists must be carefully scrutinized and conclusions drawn from them need to be examined closely. Honest errors and surmises, not to mention fabrications and wishful thinking, are not unknown and the researcher would do well to heed the admonition “caveat lector”.

I decided to focus on the first 12 items of the 1250 word list. They appear in the following order:

[abalorio; abarraz; abencerraje; abenuz; abismal; acafelar; acebibe; acebuche; aceche; aceifa; aceite; aceituna].

As a native Spanish speaker and life-long student of Arabic, I was sure that I’d have no trouble with most of these words. I quickly recognized [aceite], [aceituna] as “oil” and “olive” from Arabic [zeit, zeitun]. The term [abismal], an obvious cognate of English "abysmal", was also immediately familiar, though I was mildly bemused that it might be of Semitic origin. Still, I’d leave that for later and continue with my lexicographical ramble.

But bemusement quickly turned to bewilderment as I realized that I was unable to recognize any of the remaining 9 words . I’d never seen any of them in print nor had I ever heard them spoken. I decided to consult a well-known and comprehensive on-line Spanish dictionary, trusting that some if not all of these odd words would be found there.

But none of them were.

Alarmed, I checked additional sources and was able to come up with “a string of beads, necklace” for [abalorio], the first word in the list, and “wild olive tree” for [acebuche], a botanical term. These two terms are so specialized that I feel confident in saying that possibly two or three in several hundred native Spanish speakers would recognize either of these words.

Returning to the cognates [abismal – abysmal], I checked several English dictionaries only to be informed that [abysmal] was Greek in origin, not Arabic. My references didn’t even mention Arabic in any context at all for this item.

Now, it’s well known that Arabic had absorbed numerous Greek terms during the great translation period of the early Islamic centuries, when many of the Greek classics were translated into Arabic. Thus the term [abismal] may indeed have entered Spanish through Arabic after Arabic got it from Greek, if that’s what really happened. But that’s very different from suggesting that [abismal] is of Arabic origin. That would be like saying that the works of Aristotle are of Semitic origin because they came to Europe via the medium of Arabic. Arabic was the intermediary, not the source.

The results of my brief investigation can be summarized as follows: Of the 12 words examined, I was able to recognize 3, but one of these turned out not to be of Arabic origin at all. Of the remaining 9, two are highly specialized and rare words and 7 remain complete mysteries. What are we to make of this baffling linguistic equation?

I don’t doubt that more than 4000 Arabic words may have entered Spanish during the 700 years the Arabs lived in Spain. But that statement must be carefully qualified to take reality into account.

The vast majority of these imported words were of a highly specialized nature, rare in daily occurrence. Many were restricted to use in trades and professions that have been defunct for centuries. Certain Arabic-laden “sciences”, such as astrology and alchemy, have long since disappeared and their specialized vocabularies are no longer functional. They have entered the subaltern world of the obsolete and archaic or have dropped out of the language entirely. Others are likely literary terms attested to once or twice in surviving texts. Those that have remained in current usage include place names and the Arabic terms for the flora and fauna introduced into Spain during this period. Stellar nomenclature is an interesting category in which Arabic names have had an impact. But even here, the meaning of the Arabic terms has long since been forgotton; only the names remain.

In fact, within contemporary Spanish usage, I surmise that perhaps only three hundred words other than place names can be traced directly back to their Arabic origins. Indeed, this may be an overly generous estimate.

I know that in my own Spanish speech, I can readily recognize only about 50 common, everyday items as being directly descendent from Arabic. [almohada] “pillow” is one, [alcalde] “mayor (of a city)” is another, [aduana] “customs house” is a third. That figure might be doubled to about 100 words if I include my reading vocabulary. Were I to triple these figures, the amounts would still hardly point to a significant Arabic influence.

Even some of these terms, long “known” to be of Semitic origin, must be viewed with some skepticism. [Aduana] is the usual Spanish word for “customs” or “custom house”. It can be seen at all the international airports of Spanish speaking countries designating the area where passenger baggage is to be opened for inspection. It’s a corruption of the Arabic 'diwaan'. The term has several different meanings but it most often signifies “a public audience room” of one sort or another and it was with this meaning that the word entered Spanish.

But in fact, [diwaan], like [abismal], is not a Semitic word at all. Its origin lies further east in Persia where Iranian and related Indo-European tongues have been spoken for millennia. [Diwaan] is an Iranian word that entered Arabic. There’s little doubt that Arabic subsequently introduced the word into Spain, but to thereby conclude that Spanish [aduana] is Semitic in origin is to misrepresent the facts and ignore basic etymological methodology.

Admittedly, my project was of an elementary nature, but a quick glance at the remaining words on the 1250 word list convinced me that further research was unnecessary. I recognized exceedingly few as within the purview of an educated Spanish speaker, and many that were recognizable were in reality international words (yemeni, visir, imam, lapislazuli) found in many contemporary languages other than Spanish. Even these words, although probably familiar to the educated public of many nations, can hardly be designated as common words. An avid reader might run across them in print possibly a dozen times a year and actually use them in speech far less frequently than that.

Despite centuries of proximity to one another, there was never a marriage of Spanish with Arabic as happened between English and French. In the latter case, French influenced English fundamentally, such that related concepts can be expressed in English using the vocabulary of two distinct language families. Thus we have Germanic "freedom" and Latin "liberty", "quick" and "rapid", "help" and "assist". Nouns, verbs, adjectives, they all tumbled into English seemingly unimpeded. The list is nearly endless.

Had this linguistic process become active between Arabic and Spanish, it would have been of the highest significance in the development of Spanish. But this never happened. Spanish was reluctant to admit the Semitic into its inner soul. In Persia and lands further east, Arabic had an enormous effect on the languages it encountered. But in Iberia, Arabic remained a guest, not a partner.

Ibn Zayid’s entry into Spain signaled one of the great adventures of early Medieval times and Arabic became the great transmitter of a lost Hellenic heritage. For this, the debt to Arabic by the West remains enormous. But Arabic ultimately found itself on alien soil in Iberia and could take no permanent root. It had ventured too far from its desert origins. Like the brilliant Islamic civilization that it represented, the dominance of Arabic peaked and waned. Then it was gone forever, leaving only traces of its once overwhelming presence.

That Arabic significantly affected the Spanish lexicon in any permanent way is largely a romantic, nostalgic illusion, hearkening back to a time that has long since vanished. The bed-rock Latin of Spanish was never disturbed let alone displaced. The startling conclusion we can draw from all this is not how many Arabic words exist in modern Spanish usage, given the nearly 700 years that Arabic ruled in Spain, but how few.



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Iniciado por Valmadian

. ¿Qué suponen pues 4.000 palabras en un corpus lingüístico que reúne más de 13 millones de acepciones, incluidos los americanismos? tal y como ha recogido la R.A.E. en su primera actualización y compilación en soporte informático.

I agree with Valmadian.
Certainly a very reduced influence: 4000 words out of 13.000.000.